mining

A decade after it was first adopted by the U.S. Forest Service, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has proven to be remarkably successful in protecting the 58.5 million acres of national forest roadless areas from road building and logging.

Anglo American, the London-based multinational powerhouse behind the project, says it can extract the minerals safely. But historically the mining industry has done a sloppy job of protecting the environment. Mining residues, like sulfide-laced rock, are toxic. No matter how hard the company tries to sequester them — it proposes to build a 740-foot-high dam to contain the waste — an earthquake or other disturbance can jar them loose.

A team of U.N. scientists is meeting with Glacier National Park leaders to discuss the potential impact of coal mining and natural gas development near the World Heritage Site.

The U.N. delegates met all day Monday with Glacier Park leadership, scientists, researchers and local stakeholders. They are expected to spend a couple more days touring the park and meeting with officials on the U.S. side of the border before heading to the Canadian side of the Flathead Valley in British Columbia to meet with officials there.

The ads, paid for by the Renewable Resources Coalition, an anti-Pebble nonprofit in Anchorage, are already running in some Alaska magazines and are pegged to run on statewide TV later this year.

Eventually, conservation groups hope to target a national audience with the "Deadliest Catch" ads, said Lindsay Bloom, who works for Trout Unlimited, another nonprofit group that opposes Pebble. Bloom, a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman, set up the ad shoot.

In another regulatory action in the waning days of the Bush administration, the Interior Department on Thursday unveiled a new rule that challenges Congress’s authority to prevent mining planned on public lands.

Hardrock mining considered the “highest and best use” for public lands regardless of impacts on watersheds, wildlife, landscapes or local communities

For nearly a decade, the Coalition for Otero Mesa has worked to safeguard the fragile grasslands, abundant wildlife, and freshwater resources of Otero Mesa from full-scale oil and gas drilling. Now, a new and more volatile threat has emerged for America’s largest and wildest grassland – hardrock mining.

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BOISE – Regional and national conservation groups denounced a new state policy going into effect today that removes virtually all protection from more than 400,000 acres of national roadless forest in Idaho. The state plan promoted by the Bush administration also opens millions of acres of roadless forests to road construction, logging and mining.

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Uranium mining near the Grand Canyon? It may seem hard to believe, but up until recently, the government has allowed such dangerous mining to be conducted in the sensitive Grand Canyon ecosystem, threatening the Colorado River and Grand Canyon itself with contamination.

Fortunately an end may be in sight. The Bureau of Land Management is currently considering banning new mining claims under the antiquated 1872 Mining Law in the greater Grand Canyon ecosystem. But if and how much land they protect is uncertain.

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After working successfully for more than a decade to protect New Mexico’s wild desert grassland Otero Mesa from oil and gas drilling, a new threat has emerged – hardrock mining. This winter, we learned that a mining company recently staked dozens of mining claims on Otero Mesa and plans to conduct exploratory drilling for rare earth minerals. The mining claims are in areas we have proposed for wilderness protection and “area of critical environmental concern” designation, and where we hope the Obama administration will designate a national monument.

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A decade after it was first adopted by the U.S. Forest Service, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has proven to be remarkably successful in protecting the 58.5 million acres of national forest roadless areas from road building and logging. Only about 75 miles of road building has occurred in the roadless areas — far less than the Forest Service had predicted a decade ago — and just a miniscule fraction of the unroaded forests has been logged, mostly in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.